Frosty Drew Clear Sky Chart

Current seeing conditions at Frosty Drew Observatory

The Sun and Moon Today

  • The Sun as seen today from NASA SDO.
  • Waning Gibbous 55% phase

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Satellite Events for Tonight

Could We Actually Terraform Mars? A New Scientific Roadmap Lays Out the Blueprint—And the Risks

Reported by Universe Today

Reading the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson brings the benefits and pitfalls of efforts to terraform the Red Planet into sharp relief. Since the 1970s, when Carl Sagan first suggested the possibility that we could make Mars more Earth-like, that proce...
  • By: Andy Tomaswick (https://www.universetoday.com/authors/andy-tomaswick)
  • On: Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:46 +0000

What is the Earth’s most distant spacecraft?

Reported by Space | EarthSky

The most distant spacecraft from Earth is Voyager 1. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is a few billion miles farther from Earth than its sibling, Voyager 2. The post What is the Earth’s most distant spacecraft? first appeared on EarthSky....
  • By: Space | EarthSky
  • On: Thu, 09 Apr 2026 10:01 +0000

Snow in the Shadow of the Andes

Reported by NASA

An early autumn storm left higher elevations in southern Argentina with a fresh and fleeting coat of white....
  • By: NASA
  • On: Thu, 09 Apr 2026 04:01 +0000

Webb's Picture of the Month Features Two Planet-Forming Disks and a Possible Planet

Reported by Universe Today

Two images of protoplanetary disks side-by-side. The left image shows a dark horizontal band covering the star, with broad, colorful, conical outflows above and below it, and a narrow jet pointing directly up and down from the star. The right image shows t...
  • By: Matthew Williams (https://www.universetoday.com/authors/houseofwilliams)
  • On: Wed, 08 Apr 2026 23:03 +0000

A Mercury Rover Could Explore the Planet by Sticking to the Terminator

Reported by Universe Today

A Mercury lander mission would create opportunities to sample unique geological features. However, extreme temperature fluctuations on Mercury’s surface pose challenges for exploration on the planetary surface. In a narrow region near the terminator, tem...
  • By: Matthew Williams (https://www.universetoday.com/authors/houseofwilliams)
  • On: Wed, 08 Apr 2026 21:52 +0000

A New Class of Star: Merger Remnant

Reported by Universe Today

In the vastness of the Universe, any new object with interesting properties can spur the search for similar objects, potentially establishing a new class of stars. In a paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics and an arXiv preprint, researchers from...
  • By: Evan Gough (https://www.universetoday.com/authors/ion23drive)
  • On: Wed, 08 Apr 2026 19:41 +0000